If you're actually a legal resident of the Netherlands well that doesn't help you at all since the Netherlands gov't has complete visibility into financial transactions within the country.
Same with the US. Great place to hide money if you're from certain countries since Uncle Sam doesn't give two shits if some countries can't collect taxes.
For the citizen, it is indeed, a country with one of the biggest individual Total Tax loads in the world. You get a flurry of them and its not really progressive. You are basically paying into one of three tax brackets and the top rate of 49.5 percent comes very quickly for anything above to €68,507 ( aprox 80,000 USD )
The current world top countries by income tax brackets are:
Ivory Coast 60% Finland 56.95% Japan 55.97% Denmark 55.9% Austria 55% Sweden 52.9% Aruba 52% Belgium 50% Israel 50% Slovenia 50% Netherlands 49.5%
As I do not believe anybody in the Ivory Coast is paying those tax brackets...and as Aruba is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands :-) you are definitely in the top ten but that is only half of the story. After you go through all of these:
Income tax (inkomstenbelasting)
Payroll tax (loonheffing)
VAT sales tax (BTW / omzetbelasting)
Import tax (douane)
Motor vehicle tax (motorrijtuigbelasting)
Inheritance tax (erfbelasting)
Gift tax (schenkbelasting)
Transfer tax (overdrachtsbelasting)
Most towns even have a Dog tax! ( but funnily enough...not a Cat tax...)
https://www.denhaag.nl/en/taxes/dog-tax.htm
"... It makes no difference if the dog is big or small..." , what means they actually thought about it.
Believe it or not, there is even an Exit Tax if you decide to say its too much, and you want to leave the country with your assets. You then get all of the local ones:
property tax
waste collection charges
street cleaning/maintenance
sewerage tax
movable property tax (e.g., houseboats, portable kiosks)
The system is organized for the corporations, and special tax structures organized by the big four, and other organizations close to to the Dutch political system.
"...There is no revolving door policy for departing Dutch civil servants. Employees are free to take up any new position once they've served their notice period..."
Old sample example: https://corporateeurope.org/en/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/niko...
Its particularly for Foundations and the rich who can afford it, like for example the Ikea foundation based in the Netherlands:
"IKEA’s Flat-Pack Tax Scheme: a Corporate Structure Designed to Facilitate Profit-shifting and Tax Avoidance"
https://medium.com/@jurgeng/ikeas-tax-scheme-a-corporate-str...
Ivory Coast 60% Finland 56.95% Japan 55.97% Denmark 55.9% Austria 55% Sweden 52.9% Aruba 52% Belgium 50% Israel 50% Slovenia 50% Netherlands 49.5%
It doesn't help that tax systems are so complicated that it can be almost impossible to make meaningful like-for-like comparisons in discussions like this.
For example, the UK isn't listed there, yet in reality the way our system works creates brackets where some people do have an effective marginal income tax rate over 60%. Worse, the system isn't entirely progressive, because those brackets don't coincide with the final marginal rate of income tax for those with the highest incomes.
Rather like the Dutch, for those of us living in the UK and those of us operating small businesses here, who are paying the full intended tax rates, it's frustrating to see the games played by the huge multinationals and UHNW individuals that are clearly forms of tax avoidance, and to see the UK labelled as a tax haven. I doubt anyone living near me feels like they're benefitting from an unusually low-tax economy right now!
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Running your own BV was always stupidly expensive.
I doubt this is what people are talking about when they say the Netherlands is a tax heaven. Italy and Spain have similar schemes.